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Sunday, October 26, 2014

India must clarify what it wants from ties with the US

There is a great deal of rhetoric flying around when it comes to India-US relations. In
November 2010, addressing a joint session of Parliament, President
Barack Obama described the US-India relationship as "one of the defining
partnerships of the 21st century." Earlier
this week, speaking to an American think-tank, Secretary of State John
Kerry declared that the US and India should be "indispensable partners
for the 21st century." The Indians haven't been slouches
either. It was, after all Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee who termed
India and the US as "natural allies." The issue in Indo-American relations, however, has been the ability and will to translate rhetoric into policy and practice. Trust Most
observers blame a "trust deficit" for the current state of Indo-US
relations. Actually, the idea of a "trust deficit" is merely a cover for
the real problem – the lack of political will on either side to take the
relationship between the two countries to the stage that the
rhetoricians have been promising. Blame must be shared by both sides. India
did let down the US when it passed a self-defeating nuclear liability
law which undermined the very basis on which the Indo-US nuclear deal
was sold to the US public – the possibility of India acquiring
significant US civil nuclear technology.

For
its part, the Obama Administration, caught up in domestic turbulence
and developments in East Asia and the Arab world, simply let the Indian
ball drop.

New Delhi was not worth the time, they
felt, especially when it appeared that India had lost its economic
oomph and its growth plummeted after 2010.

One of the big problems in the US-India relationships is the asymmetry between the two would-be partners. One
is clearly the richest and most powerful nation in the world, the other
a large and poor country whose performance in keeping its people
healthy and free from hunger has little to commend it. An associated problem is that while the US is quite clear on what it wants from India, New Delhi is not so clear.

+3

Strong ties: India's PM Narendra Modi is keen to
re-assert Indian interests in South Asia, and a strong relationship
with the US could help him do this

You can blame the asymmetry
for this, but there is also the problem of the lack of an institutional
approach from the Indian side which would knit together a clear-cut
national strategy. We
do have today the first government since 1984 to have a majority of its
own, but as is well known the party that forms that Government, has a
plethora of views on the common issues of the day as evidenced by the
activities of the Swadeshi Jagran Manch, and the Bhartiya Kisan Sangh. The Bhartiya Mazdoor Sangh will also have its say one of these days. Beyond consensus within the party, is the problem of building a unified policy platform across the nation. Unhappiness From
the point of view of the US, there are a range of issues that are being
raised by Kerry in the strategic dialogue that is underway, beginning
with the unhappiness at India's stand on the issue of food subsidies at
the WTO. The US is also looking to India to accommodate American commercial interests in pharmaceuticals, retail and financial services.
In a subset of this, come concerns relating to the nuclear liability
act and India's persistent refusal to sign end user agreements that
limit the sale of American military hardware to India.For
its part, India would certainly like US investment and technology and
to open itself up to Indian service professionals. But many of these are
not in the hands of the US Government. On
the other hand, China and Japan have money and technology on offer. The
Japanese have put in $10billion for the North-South industrial and
freight corridor. Even
the UK is willing to step into the Bangalore-Chennai corridor. In the
case of the US, we do not have an easily recognisable commitment. In
the past, whether it was in boosting Indian education or in
transforming our agriculture, the US played a stellar role. Something
similar is needed to put substance into the ties between two dissimilar
partners. There is a great deal of business the two countries need to do in the field of foreign and security policy. Many Indians believe the US is in it only to get India to balance off the rising power of China.

Balance But we, too, need the US for the same reason – to balance China.
It would be nice to believe that we can somehow be neutral in the
emerging stand-off between China the US and Japan. But we cannot forget
that we have a serious problems with China relating to our border and
its policy of arming Pakistan. Worse,
the military power deficit between China and India is growing, in some
measure due to the dysfunctional nature of India's national security
machinery. Unlike the
US, with whom we have recently had problems on Bangladesh and Maldives,
China follows a policy of displacing us in South Asia. The
Modi Government has shown foresight in seeking to re-establish Indian
primacy in the region, and in this venture US help would be useful.

It is only on the basis of a strong South Asian anchor that India can play a significant extra-regional role.
Barring the issue of Pakistan, we do not have serious differences with
the US, and Washington has, in the past decade, been willing to accept
South Asia as being part of India's sphere of influence. But
our most important task is to determine and prioritise what we need
from the US. Then we should evolve a strategy to get what we want. If
we can do this, offering a trade concession here, or compromising on a
point there, will be easier. No matter what the rhetoric is, at the end
of the day, relations between nations are primarily transactional. Mail Today July 31, 2014